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5 Effective Ways of Teaching Digital Literacy in Class Today

by Innov8tiv.com

Almost every teacher recognizes the importance of digital literacy, but not all of them understand how to teach it. Digital literacy is one of the essential skills to possess in this digital era. Your students need to understand how to use modern digital tools like tablets and computers in writing notes and researching, among other skills.

Most students already understand how to use a wide range of digital tools; they are still a long way into understanding how to use these tools for learning purposes. For instance, a well-knowledgeable student will understand the processes of researching data and how to seek help from reliable paper writing services using the necessary tools.

Most teachers still use the traditional pencil and paper method of teaching because they fear that their students will fail to earn good grades. However, when you practice the best digital literacy teaching methods, you will certainly record even better grades with your students.

How to Teach Digital Literacy in Class Today

So how do you go about teaching digital literacy in today’s classroom? The methods of teaching this crucial skill are both easy and achievable. Here’s how to go about this teaching process if you want to achieve better results with your students.

1. Teach About Online Identity Management

There is a way the information you upload on your social media and other online platforms traces back to you and identifies with yourself. As a digital literacy teacher, you need to equip your students with the necessary skills to manage their accounts.

Talk to them about managing their passwords, reading the privacy policy, and maintaining the same respectful standards they portray when interacting with people personally. Today, companies go through every detail of a person they wish to hire, and the online identity one has can either earn or deny them a job opportunity.

Teaching your students the right ways of managing their identity and the importance of sharing useful information is important. It can be likened to an investment they will reap from in their lifetime.

2. Teach on the Need for Critical Thinking

Your students’ choice for using digital media is one that has a fair share of challenges. One of the key setbacks is the inability to distinguish reliable sources from unreliable ones. As students seek information from online sources, they will meet search results from numerous sources, and they have to separate useful ones from those that aren’t.

Without good critical thinking skills, your students may become victims of exposure to insecure sites and unverified online information. When you teach them how to question information in these sites, they will know what to go for and have a safer learning experience.

Therefore, you cannot effectively teach digital literacy without helping your students become critical thinkers first. This skill will go a long way into solving a significant number of the challenges they are likely to meet in the online platforms.

3. Guide Them on How to Avoid Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a serious offense for your students to commit. But without proper guidance on how to avoid it, they are bound to commit it in their first attempt at writing research papers and essays. That is why you need to include a detailed topic on how they should handle their assignments without plagiarizing online content.

The rules surrounding plagiarism may be as fragile as forgetting to add the quotation marks to indicate someone’s words. Failing to mention these rules may lead your students to plagiarize without even knowing they did. Studies indicate that many students still don’t understand what plagiarism is but are thirsty to learn what it is and how to avoid it.

Your students may not achieve digital literacy if you don’t touch on this crucial subject in its entirety. Teach them how to avoid plagiarism and give them necessary tests with examples to ensure they walk out fully equipped and aware of all plagiarism rules.

4. Encourage Them to Use Social Media Effectively

While social media harbors many moral ills, there are still numerous good things your students could gain from there. You can guide them on how to learn and collaborate using social media rather than sharing unhelpful stuff.

Since modern students already have an in-depth understanding of how to use social media, it will be futile to introduce them. You can go straight to demonstrating to them how they can use social media as an educational platform. Let them understand how they can source for useful content and have discussions that add to their studies’ progress while at it.

For instance, you can teach them how to use Twitter to create polls for research purposes and find expert sources. Teach them how to use Facebook and LinkedIn to connect and collaborate with their peers.

5. Teach on the Need to Manage Digital Distractions

A majority of digital tools come with a significant number of distractions. These distractions will make your students feel distant and drained and minimize their enjoyment of the whole teaching process. The effect is worse if you need your students to juggle multiple media sources and edublogs for their research.

Therefore, you should work round the clock to equip your students with the necessary skills to manage digital distractions. This is one topic you can never overlook if you intend to produce well-equipped digital literacy students.

Conclusion

Students embrace new skills in different ways and at different paces. That is why you need to give more freedom to the students to settle for what works best for them. You can always start with what they already know and only add or subtract to the knowledge they have.

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